Page 30 of Marked By the Enemy
“No,” I replied. “But you haven’t earned it.”
“Fair.”
“You don’t trust me either.”
He hesitated, and one corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “No. But I trust the bond will protect me from any attacks you plan.”
We didn’t speak much after that. The last of the light died behind the ridge. Stars appeared, faint through the gaps in the canopy. He laid back. I didn’t. I sat upright, arms resting on my knees, eyes open, knife still close.
The blade stayed quiet beside me. Like him. Like the bond. The bond didn’t echo or pull. But in the silence between breaths, I could feel it drifting outward like a hand brushing the edge of a map.
Chapter nine
Silk on Candle Wax
By morning, we packed again. We had to keep going until the bond stopped pulling and settled down. The force drew us to its desired resting place. Darian rolled the blankets while I checked the tether’s pull. Still west.
The trail narrowed on the second day of travel, winding through low brush and thorny hedges that left welts on my arms. My boots were soaked before noon. The air was warm enough to keep sweat pinned beneath my collar, and the flies came in clouds.
Darian walked on, ignoring them and always watching the tree line. We passed a glade littered with animal bones, picked clean. We didn’t stop there. That night, we found a hollow beneath an overhang of rock.
I lay down with my back to the stone, listening to the wind move through dry leaves like breath through teeth. Darian didn’t sleep right away. He sat near the edge, sword in hand, eyes fixed on the dark. The bond curled around us like smoke. By the third morning, my legs moved without thought. My shouldersached from the weight of the pack, and every noise in the underbrush made my knife-hand twitch.
The sun climbed, but the trees grew taller, thicker, until we moved in half-shadow. The birds here didn’t sing. They rasped. I didn’t trust the quiet anymore. Not after the Keepers’ words.
What if they followed the Bone Seat and had tricked me? What if the Bone Seat had ordered them to warn me—so I would run straight into another trap? It would be clever. Hide truth inside prophecy. Send a girl fleeing with the one weapon you want to control.
Darian hadn’t questioned me about the Keepers. That made me nervous. Either he believed too easily or was pretending. And if he was pretending, that meant his every look, every word, every half-smile was part of a plan I hadn’t seen yet.
Rain thundered down halfway into the third night. Cold, sharp, windblown. We pressed into the side of a narrow hill, cloaks drawn tight. Water slipped down my back. Darian handed me a strip of dried fruit from his pouch. We chewed in silence, the bond quiet between us like a lull in pain.
The next day, a ridge appeared, sloped and cracked, and just beyond it, a Keep. Our pace quickened. This seemed like the destination the bond always meant for us. We crested the ridge as the golden sun broke through the trees, its light scattered through branches like coins tossed by someone careless. I blinked as my breath scraped thin in my chest. We hadn’t spoken in hours. Darian stood ahead, boots braced on stone, his cloak dark against the slope. He turned and met my gaze for a beat too long. No words. No smirk. Just that unreadable quiet he wore like armor.
I looked away first. I remembered the way he’d looked when I burst into his room—shirt half-unbuttoned, hair wet from washing. He hadn’t moved to cover himself but said, “Pack fast.”
I hated that I remembered. That I’d looked. That I wanted to again. The bond felt satisfied and enjoyed being away from the court. That scared me. Because contentment didn’t mean satisfaction. It meant independence, as if the bond was no longer waiting for orders and starting to choose what it liked.
What if the binding vow was becoming something else—something sentient? What if it didn’t need us anymore?
Right now, the bond, a silent, unseen presence, calmly registered the gulf that stretched between us. It always did. I wiped my palms on my thighs, then adjusted the strap of my pack. My muscles burned. My feet hurt. Even so, some part of me—the part shaped by too many years of running, hiding, surviving—observed the line of his jaw.
He showed no cruelty, contrary to the Boundless’s warning. He stayed still. Like he was always listening for something deeper than sound. I hated that I’d started to notice. He offered me a hand without speaking, steadying me over a patch of loose shale.
That’s how it would start, wasn’t it? Allowing him in slowly, bit by bit, until I couldn’t distinguish between what belonged to me and what belonged to him.
I told myself I was using him. Letting him think we were on the same side. But when his hand closed over mine, the bond shimmered. And I didn’t pull away. I didn’t need it. But I took it anyway.
His fingers wrapped around mine, and for a fleeting moment, my anger slipped away. It was enough time for me to ponder the possibilities if I released my grip on the past. The warnings from the Boundless echoing in my mind, clashing with the pull of our bond. I dropped his hand. Let it fall. I wasn’t ready. But the bond remembered that I’d touched him. It held the shape of my touch all the way down the ridge.
We found shelter in the ruins of an old training keep before nightfall. My footsteps echoed in the abandoned halls, accompanied by the occasional scurrying of small creatures seeking refuge like us.
The crumbling stones shifted and creaked under our weight. I kept checking behind us. Each echo of our boots sounded like a second set. Darian didn’t react, but I caught him glancing sideways once like he’d heard it too. The roof had long since collapsed. Ivy knotted through the broken stones of the barracks, threading in and out of the shattered windows.
The forge lay crumbled, a hollow shell blackened by time. As we made our way through the dark and musty corridors, my hand brushed against sharp edges and jagged corners.
The practice rings, though battered and broken, remained distinguishable from the surrounding ground. Years of use had trampled the grasses, making them sparse. It was as if the rings had been branded into the earth, leaving permanent marks like scars that refused to fade away.
The ring we chose was the largest. It was an open circle carved deep into the earth, bordered by stones once white, now weather-stained and moss-cloaked. The shape held, even after time and rain and ruin. Grass refused to grow inside it. The compacted dirt was glassy in places, with the faint shimmer of old enchantment long faded.
